Donald Trump claimed Sundar Pichai praised his McDonald’s visit after earlier alleging Google obscured search results about him
US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump claimed that Google CEO Sundar Pichai called him up to compliment his recent McDonald’s visit.
“I did McDonald’s last week and I actually got a call from Sundar (Pichai),” Trump said on his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast. “He said, ‘This is the biggest thing we’ve had in years.’”
“I did McDonald’s last week and I actually got a call from Sundar (Pichai),” Trump said on his appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast. “He said, ‘This is the biggest thing we’ve had in years.’”
Trump added that Pichai who he called a “great guy” said, ‘This McDonald’s thing, I want to tell you, it’s one of the biggest things we’ve ever had on Google. It just hit.’”
However, this comes after Trump previously said Google obscured results for people trying to find information about him and that he had reached out to Pichai to voice his complaints on the matter.
Why did Donald Trump visit McDonald’s?
Donald Trump visited the McDonald’s store in Pennsylvania as a part of his campaign strategy to undermine opponent Vice President Kamala Harris.
After working at the store, in an apron at the french fry station and handing food to customers, he quipped that he had now worked “15 minutes more than her,” referring to Harris describing her own experience of working in McDonalds when she was young.
“She lied about McDonald’s,” Trump alleged. “I’ve worked here for 15 minutes, which is 15 minutes more than she worked here. Has that proven that she never worked at McDonald’s? Well, McDonald’s has no information. No, she has no information. She’s nobody. The manager said she’d never worked there.”
t was an unorthodox – and lengthy – conversation for a presidential candidate, underscoring the Republican nominee’s outreach to young male voters and quest for wave-making spectacle during the closing days of the presidential campaign.
The podcast, recorded Friday during a visit to Austin, Texas, is the latest effort by Trump to broaden his electoral appeal beyond his fervent conservative base with polls showing him deadlocked with Democrat Kamala Harris.
Trump opined on a number of topics, defending his populist economic agenda while offering strong praise for billionaire Elon Musk – who he labeled “out of this world” – as well as Chinese President Xi Jinping. Throughout his bid to return to the White House, Trump has teased a resumption of the tit-for-tat trade war that he waged with Xi in his first term.
The conversation stretched long enough that Trump ended up hours late for a rally in swing-state Michigan, where hundreds of supporters trickled out of the venue as temperatures dropped while waiting for him to arrive.
But Rogan, widely considered the most popular podcaster in the world — boasting 17.5 million subscribers on YouTube and 15.7 million on Spotify — offered a unique platform for the former president to reach not only a massive audience, but one full of the type of independent voters both campaigns have said could decide the election.
Harris has also sought to tap into the growing popularity of non-traditional media venues, appearing on podcasts including hit Call Her Daddy with Alex Cooper. Her campaign said scheduling difficulties kept her from appearing on Rogan’s show.
Here are the key highlights from Trump and Rogan’s conversation:
‘Biggest Mistake’
Asked by Rogan what his “biggest mistake” was in office, Trump responded that he “picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked.”
“Neocons or bad people or just disloyal people,” he added.
Trump singled out two former officials — both of whom have been turned into prominent critics, former White House chief of staff John Kelly and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. Kelly has accused Trump of saying that he wanted the kind of generals that Adolf Hitler had and of praising the former Nazi leader as having done some good things — allegations Trump has denied.
The former president called Kelly a “bully” and dismissed Bolton as “an idiot.”
‘Most Beautiful Word’
Trump again defended his populist economic agenda focused on renewing expiring tax cuts, offering fresh tax reductions and benefits and sweeping tariffs on foreign nations that he says will help bolster domestic manufacturing in the US.
The Republican nominee called the word tariff “the most beautiful word” in the dictionary.
“It’s more beautiful than love. It’s more beautiful than anything,” he said. “This country can become rich with the use — the proper use — of tariffs.”
Rogan asked if Trump would consider replacing income taxes with tariffs. Trump responded, “Yeah, sure. Why not?” and proceeded to argue that the US was wealthiest when it had strong tariffs in the late 19th century.
Trump has dismissed claims from most economists that the tariffs would spur inflation and that the levies would fail to produce the revenue he predicts.
